"Divergent Paths" Discussion

[Rigil Kent]

Though I suppose your recent chapter in which Starfleet and Earth's government are clearly run by a bunch of morons qualifies, now that I think about it.

Well, to be fair, based on what I saw in canon, Starfleet and EarthGov were run by a bunch of morons.

But honestly, that's pretty much true of all governmental agencies in television. They're all pretty much portrayed as a majority of incompetent boobs. Truth in advertising, I guess.

[aadarshinah]

But honestly, that's pretty much true of all governmental agencies in television. They're all pretty much portrayed as a majority of incompetent boobs.

They have to be portrayed as incompetent. It creates dramatic tension.

Well, to be fair, based on what I saw in canon, Starfleet and EarthGov were run by a bunch of morons.

Honestly, though. Your planet has just been attacked: under what circumstances would you not want to track down the people who ordered it?

[Alelou]

Yeah, even just politically speaking it would be suicide NOT to. But whatever.

[Rigil Kent]

Well, to be fair, based on what I saw in canon, Starfleet and EarthGov were run by a bunch of morons.

Honestly, though. Your planet has just been attacked: under what circumstances would you not want to track down the people who ordered it?

When the captain of your most advanced starship starts spinning a story about time travel and aliens nobody has heard of and his desire to take said advanced starship into a region of space even Vulcans fear to tread. In this situation, as opposed to canon, Archer has no proof and is operating entirely on the word of Daniels (who is of questionable honesty to begin with.) Doesn't matter if Soval agrees - he's been neutralized by the current Vulcan ambassador. Jon has no proof that these Xindi - whom no one in this continuity has heard of, including the Vulcans - are behind this. It would be like a NASA guy insisting that we attack Jupiter or Saturn following the attacks on 9-11 because a time traveler told him so.

And with corrupt Vulcans like Tos having the ear of the politicians who run things, Starfleet, by default, has to obey the orders given to them (which are generally "stay here, defend the homeworld, etc.") Factor in Starfleet's reticence about doing anything else that's going to blow up in their face (coming in the wake of both the Paraagan mess at the end of season 1, and then the whole Ekos disaster back in chapters 1 through 3), and you'd see (I suspect) exactly the sort of CYA that bureaucrats are known for. I point you directly to the useless 9-11 Commission that didn't ask the right questions, didn't make the right changes, and was just a bunch of self-important blowhards covering their assess. Or how utterly incompetent the CIA has become in the last twenty years, to the point where the DOD has to create their own intelligence network to get the intel the troops in the field need to survive.

Whoops. There I go again.

Besides, what exactly does one do once they track them down? In a realistic situation, they'd do their damnedest to nuke the SOBs back to the stone age, but in the Trek-verse, they get together and sing happy songs or pull out a deux ex machina resolution (usually by having a Bigger Bad show up, so the previous enemies have to unite to beat them back.)

In canon, I'd ask why they would be as stupid as to send a single starship (or, for that matter, why they didn't bother having some sort of planetary defense network in place to begin with.) Or why an organization called Starfleet apparently didn't have more than a handful of starships at their disposal.

[Alelou]

Enterprise canon in regards to this often gets mind-numblingly weird. The idea that Earth's space would be devoid of any even token attempts at defense when the Xindi weapon shows up is just bizarre. Did they run out of CGI money or what? Instead of the Xindi blowing up a station, why not a craft (or more) actually trying to defend the planet? How hard would it have been to make it just that teeny little bit more realistic?

[aadarshinah]

Jon has no proof that these Xindi - whom no one in this continuity has heard of, including the Vulcans - are behind this. It would be like a NASA guy insisting that we attack Jupiter or Saturn following the attacks on 9-11 because a time traveler told him so.

I'm not saying that Starfleet should've jumped on Archer's bandwagon and sent every ship they had after the Xindi, but I do think it's a little odd that none of the politicans were saying, "We just got attacked by someone, and, as soon as we figure out who, we should attack them, tit-for-tat," after the Xindi weapon - especially in your version. After Pearl Harbour, the US got into WWII - for a lot of reasons, I know, but in part for retribution. After 9/11, I remember a lot of talk about finding who did this and making sure they could never do it again long before we actually knew who was behind the attacks. And so on...

I suppose it's possible that we just weren't privy to the politcal debates and just got the "protect the homeland" mantra that EarthGov ended up deciding upon since it took so long for Enterprise to get back, but still. If there was still lingering xenophobia around the time of "Demons" and "Terra Prime," there had to be some pretty strong anti-alien sentiment going on right at first, and some people who wanted to build their own WMDs....

The idea that Earth's space would be devoid of any even token attempts at defense when the Xindi weapon shows up is just bizarre. Did they run out of CGI money or what? Instead of the Xindi blowing up a station, why not a craft (or more) actually trying to defend the planet?

Perhaps the Xindi and FG had amazing intel as well and were able to slip through holes in their rudimentary planetary defense network?


But it is the ST-universe, so....

[panyasan]

I really enjoyed the chapter where Jon and his crew are going to take matters in their own hand to protect Earth - but I was very surprised that Earth Goverment decided to do nothing. Not if you count the numbers of deaths in Div Paths that have fallen during the Xindi attack and the wipe out of entire countries. However, the political debates and games provided a good reason why no ship was sent (and why Enterprise had to break the rules), a better reason then we have seen on the show. (I don't think they gave any reason for sending that one ship).

[Rigil Kent]

I suppose it's possible that we just weren't privy to the politcal debates and just got the "protect the homeland" mantra that EarthGov ended up deciding upon since it took so long for Enterprise to get back, but still.

This is exactly the reason I didn't get into it. With the limitation of 3rd Person Limited, I couldn't really go into a whole lot of detail as to what was happening in that regard on Earth during the 30 day period between the attack and ENT's return. Plus, they've never done a particularly good job at establishing just what sort of government is in place - it seems to be a parliamentary one, but is it a bicameral one? A unicameral one? Something else? Do they have just a single executive (ala the United States) or do they have a president and a prime minister (ala ... pretty much everyone else)? Sure, a lot of people would want to mount a response, but where? Against whom? This is the main sticking point - they don't know who attacked. Put yourself in their shoes: you're a Senator or Congressman, and a nuke destroys a city in the US. Nobody has any idea who is really behind it. (Ignoring the fact that a billion different anti-American organizations would claim credit.) How do you respond? Who do you attack in retaliation?

I think it's entirely logical to presume that there's a sizable portion of people who want to wreak some blood-soaked revenge (and perhaps these very people end up joining some of the extremist terrorist groups like Terra Prime because Earth didn't mount a retributive response like they wanted them to), and I actually suspect that the entire EarthGov executive & legislative branches (whatever form they're in) would be voted from power because of this catastrophe. But as you point out, we (or rather, the readers) simply don't have the proper data for this. I'll look at figuring out a way to relate that info. Got a couple of ideas, but well...

The idea that Earth's space would be devoid of any even token attempts at defense when the Xindi weapon shows up is just bizarre. Did they run out of CGI money or what? Instead of the Xindi blowing up a station, why not a craft (or more) actually trying to defend the planet?

Perhaps the Xindi and FG had amazing intel as well and were able to slip through holes in their rudimentary planetary defense network?

But it is the ST-universe, so....

Yeah ... has Earth in Star Trek ever been shown to be properly defended? Or, for that matter, have any of the homeworlds been defended?

I was very surprised that Earth Goverment decided to do nothing.

Did they? The previous NX-01 chapter was from Archer's POV and was shaded by his biases. For all we know, EarthGov may have approved a limited response that he didn't agree with and thought amounted to them doing nothing. And again, they're limited by their lack of knowledge about who was behind this attack. Remember, in this continuity, nobody has heard of the Xindi.

[aadarshinah]

Nobody has any idea who is really behind it. (Ignoring the fact that a billion different anti-American organizations would claim credit.) How do you respond? Who do you attack in retaliation?

Why, you attack everybody. Naturally.

But, seriously, in the real version I'd love to have seen a senator/parlimentary member/congressman/whatever on Archer's side, fighting to send battleships against whoever might claim credit for the attack, regardless of whether it could be proven or not. Preferably one with a white cowboy hat or some riddulously fake accent... But that part is probably unjustly influenced by the TV veiwing choices today.

Yeah ... has Earth in Star Trek ever been shown to be properly defended? Or, for that matter, have any of the homeworlds been defended?

It's probably very hard to defend a planet, let alone a solar system, effectively. I know it's not techinically a planet anymore, but Pluto's what? 49 AU away from the Sun? that's over 7 billion km. If you think of having to have a network of defense satalites or something to cover this, that's over 42 billion km to cover just for the circumfrance alone. Considered 3-dimensionally, as it would have to be, that's over 615 billion km to cover the area of space inside Pluto's orbit. That's a lot of satalites, even for a warp culture. Vulcan had a much smaller grid just around the planet, but, with Soval's help, Archer and T'Pol were able to sneak onto the planet a without being noticed, and the Vulcans have a much higher level of tech....

I guess it boils down to space being really, really big and there just not being enough people to keep an eye on all of it at all times. Though that doesn't excuse the lamentable job Starfleet seems to do even then in "homeland security"....

[Alelou]

Well, you don't really have to defend the whole solar system ... you just have to defend the planet. Right now there are thousands of objects in Earth orbit, enough to actually pose a hazard to the International Space Station. By their time it ought to be practically a strip mall up there. And you'd expect planetary defense to be a big part of it. So even if the Xindi slip in through a vortex that bypasses the Verteron array on Mars and so forth, you'd think there'd at least be some defending ships and satellites in orbit.

But Rigil is right. In the last movie Earth's fleet was all off in the Laurentian whatever it was. A fine Starfleet tradition. Sigh. Instead of Speed of Plot, it's Inane Military Strategy of Plot.

[aadarshinah]

Well, you don't really have to defend the whole solar system ... you just have to defend the planet.

I figure that, without an early warning system going out at least a couple AUs, at the speeds these things travel, they'd be impossible to stop by the time they got to Earth... but whatever. Anyone have any idea what the fleet was supposed to be doing at the Laurentian system in the last movie btw? And why they couldn't send any ships to Earth or Vulcan at anypoint in the movie?

[Rigil Kent]

But, seriously, in the real version I'd love to have seen a senator/parlimentary member/congressman/whatever on Archer's side, fighting to send battleships against whoever might claim credit for the attack, regardless of whether it could be proven or not.

What battleships? They barely have an actual fleet to begin with.

It's probably very hard to defend a planet, let alone a solar system, effectively.

I don't disagree - I just wanted to see them at least make a token effort. As Alelou points out, we've got so much junk up there now, it's dangerous, so you'd think that there would be a crapload of sensor satellites up there in the 2150s. These people can find individual life signs from orbit or scan immense distances, so if they had at least shown that there was at least some sort of rudimentary defenses up there (especially during "Zero Hour"), I wouldn't have been as irked as I was by it.

Vulcan had a much smaller grid just around the planet, but, with Soval's help, Archer and T'Pol were able to sneak onto the planet a without being noticed, and the Vulcans have a much higher level of tech....

But, as you point out, they had a high ranking member of the Vulcan government helping them evade said sensor grid.

I guess it boils down to space being really, really big and there just not being enough people to keep an eye on all of it at all times.

Which is why you use computers.

Instead of Speed of Plot, it's Inane Military Strategy of Plot.

Heh.

I figure that, without an early warning system going out at least a couple AUs, at the speeds these things travel, they'd be impossible to stop by the time they got to Earth... but whatever.

Which is why you would keep a defensive force in orbit over the home world. Its not logical to have ships just wandering around - you defend the soft targets (Earth, Mars, Jupiter Station, the Moon if there are people there, etc.) and ignore the targets that have no real value (Pluto, Uranus, etc.)

[aadarshinah]

What battleships? They barely have an actual fleet to begin with.

At this point, my white-hatted, thickly accented senator points out that Starfleet should have a fleet of battleships, or else all we have is a Starship, which is, sadly, uncopyrightable.

Which is why you would keep a defensive force in orbit over the home world. Its not logical to have ships just wandering around - you defend the soft targets (Earth, Mars, Jupiter Station, the Moon if there are people there, etc.) and ignore the targets that have no real value (Pluto, Uranus, etc.)

Neh, my only answer for this is the same reason Starfleet doesn't have it's fleet: people don't want to build weapons or have "just in case" systems in place until it's already to late.

[Alelou]

Um, did they not notice they had Klingons and Suliban fighting it out on a cornfield in Iowa? Or all the bad guys their flagship ran into for its first two years in space?

They'd have to be real morons, indeed. Also, the Vulcans advising them would have to be idiots. And just where did those MACO's come from if they have no standing military?

[aadarshinah]

And just where did those MACO's come from if they have no standing military?

Maybe the MACOs were supposed to be the equivlent of a national (international?) gaurd or reserve force? Some rich guy's private army? - That's it, they were PMCs, hired by Starfleet.

And, speaking of shotty defense, whose brilliant idea was it to send Enterprise into the vast unknown with only 15 phase pistols, as Malcom says they have in "Shadows of P'Jem?" Granted, most battles a ship is likely to get into would not involve hand weapons, but it does seem a tad irresponsible.